


Loving Kai

by freddiejoey



Category: Arthur of the Britons
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-08-31
Updated: 2011-08-31
Packaged: 2017-10-23 07:03:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,120
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/247524
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/freddiejoey/pseuds/freddiejoey
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kai goes missing......</p>
            </blockquote>





	Loving Kai

They should have been gone two days and now they been gone for eight – Kai and three raw warriors from the village, scouting on the edges of Cerdig’s kingdom. I am frantic beyond endurance, although I must maintain a semblance of calm. A distraught chieftain benefits no-one and there are the families of the other young men to consider as well. Their hearts are also racing, their minds also whirling, their whispered prayers just as fervent.

But in the longhouse……. Lenni has worn a furrow in the rushes beside the hearth with her pacing, Llud is unremittingly grim, three-year-old Theo is whimpering for his father, and Rowena has bruised fingers since every time she takes my hand in comfort I crush hers, biting my lip to hold back the tears………. Only Cedric, the baby slumbers on, mainly oblivious and Rowena sometimes slips away to rest because any day now our first child will be born and she is weary to the bone.

Each day we have ridden out in search of Kai’s party but there is no sign. Llud cannot track them past the estuary, - on the night after they left a storm tide battered through, spreading sludge and salt for more than a few leagues inland. Impossible now to establish a definite trail. Rowena urges me anxiously to eat but everything turns to cinders in my mouth. I have always assumed that I would know immediately if he were…………. but now I am simply numb…………….

On the ninth day I quietly ask Rowena if, son or daughter, our child can be named for….. . I am unable to form the word remembrance, with mind or mouth. Rowena smiles tenderly, eyes glistening. “Of course, I had assumed that any way……..” On the tenth I hold Lenni when her composure is finally swept away, when her grief leaves her prostrate and heartsick. It takes me longer than usual to make out what she is signing since her fingers are fluttering so wildly. “I wish……I wish that just once……I had been able to hear him….. speak my name.”

On the eleventh I don his blue shirt, tell Llud I will be gone a little while, walk up to the guest quarters and bar the door………. When I lie on the bed and close my eyes, I can almost feel his warm fingers interweaved through mine, his beloved voice whispering and laughing against my ear, his beautiful mouth imprinted on mine……… If , in this moment, someone was to query why we were as we were, I would simply answer because he was Kai, because I was Arthur – it was as simple, as wondrous, as forevermore as that – and the sobs, at last, wrack my soul…….

It is the middle of the twelfth day when the gate sentries shout a thunderous warning. I race from the longhouse, Llud hard on my heels, thinking that we must be under attack – but the only thing being attacked is my lack of faith…………. Riding down through the trees along the river are four weary horses straddled by four dishevelled exhausted warriors……..

I have often heard people say that they find it hard to give credence to miracles – and not only the obvious ones associated with the Christ of the One God, like changing water into wine and raising the dead. They question their presence in the everyday ………. I have never been in any doubt of their reality since the very sight of my brother has always been miraculous – yet now, as I run, stumbling and weeping toward Kai, our father hurtling behind me, I realise that I have hardly begun to yet know what is possible………

There is a story to be told – of patrolling Saxons and a brawl, the need to hide for several days, tend awkward painful wounds and take a circuitous route back to the village. There is a far greater tale to be recounted about the way that Kai has walked his three young companions through the fire and returned them to their families. He says later that he simply kept thinking one day it could be Theodore and Cedric – that he would hope everything would be essayed to secure their survival……… My big brother is depleted and ethereal –looking, a roughly-burned axe slash sundering his left hand, a rough growth of flaxen-brown stubble bristling his golden skin – but he is whole, he is real and he is home………

After he has eaten, Lenni puts Kai determinedly to bed in the longhouse. Everything else can wait – immediately though he needs rest and quiet. As do Berwyn and Emhyr, who are gashed and bruised, however otherwise intact. It is unlucky that young Mathias has a crooked leg that now requires setting – although lucky perhaps for Llud and Lenni as it keeps them upright and busy.

It is nearly midnight when I finish my inspection of the night sentries and can, at last, seek the longhouse sleeping chamber. As I slip inside the door it is warm and welcoming – and very full. I look around, smiling in quiet joy. We are Kai’s family – he is loved and cherished beyond measure…… In his bed Llud lies snoring beside Theo, who will not let his father out of his sight at the moment – but then twelve days is a lifetime when you are three. Lenni is sprawled with the baby on a pallet beside Kai’s bed, sleeping soundly for the first time in almost two weeks.

Suddenly too debilitated to stand, I climb in beside Rowena and place a hand on her swollen stomach. My child kicks purposefully against my palm. “Here I am. Surprised you didn’t I, waiting this late? You thought I would be here, one, two years ago, nine months after the marriage night when you made my mother laugh. Yet I was biding my entrance till I was ready, not making haste for the world.” (The story of Kaitlin’s daily existence did we but know it.)

Over Rowena’s shoulder, I watch Kai as he stirs slightly then subsides back into sleep - he is breathtaking, extraordinary, heart-stirring…… It is strange to see him bearded. All of the Celts are not clean shaven, of course, but many more than the Saxons. Most of Kai’s birth tribe seem to sport whiskers of one kind or another. Probably this is what Kai would have looked like now if our father had never seen him standing amidst the ruins of his torched homestead, if Llud had never brought him back to our village on that long- ago rainy afternoon, if he had never became my very essence and my everything……

The thought is wretched beyond bearing. I still want only to feel the euphoria of Kai’s homecoming but, all at once, I am deluged by scorching tears – of thanksgiving, of exhilaration, of unimaginable anguish always deferred….. tonight, tomorrow and forever, inextricably entwined…….

Kai does not awaken until late the following afternoon. By then there has been another source of excitement. Rowena has spent the morning industriously strewing fresh rushes across the longhouse floor, frantically scrubbing the longhouse tables, energetically plucking a hoard of longhouse fowls. All of which makes Lenni quite unperturbed when Rowena murmurs some onset of feminine mystery to her – a mystery that seems to presage an impending arrival.

(It will actually be three more days before Kaitlin at last appears, after a few false alarms and Rowena this time eroding a hollow through the hearth rushes with her feet. Following a bloody battle in Lenni’s hut that will make Modred’s field look like a skirmish - from which Rowena will emerge, courageous girl, more triumphantly than many warriors I have seen holding a sword aloft. Soon after I will give my daughter to Kai to hold while my brother still believes she is to be named for my mother. When I quietly tell him what she is to be called instead, his tears will speak more than words ever could.)

Lenni shoulders Cedric and steers Rowena firmly toward the longhouse doors. “You can come to my hut and make sure you sleep deeply tonight….. I’ll send Theo up to Olwen’s with Llud.” I attempt to appear reassuring for Rowena’s sake, pulling her close. Lenni looks amused, all too aware of my almost complete incomprehension. “Nothing is going to happen tonight but perhaps tomorrow…… At any rate, your brother should be awake soon. Make sure he eats properly – and takes a bath. My eyes tell me he certainly needs it – along with my twitching nose.”

While I wait for Kai to wake up, I heat up some meat, pour the mead, haul out the smaller tub from beside the hearth (not the larger one or I will be tempted to clamber in too, whereas Kai only needs to relax…..) I am seated by his bed reading when he opens his eyes, blinks and smiles. “Hello, little brother, all well?” I grin back, happy simply because we are so. “Yes, everything is wonderful……… now. I am under strict orders to let you eat and then apparently you must bath and later……. we shall see…….” Kai’s brown eyes twinkle. ‘Well, I’d better just be obedient………. no onerous burden since I’m feeling especially ……… famished.”

After my big brother has consumed two mountainous bowls of roast boar and I have pulled the tub in front of the fire and filled it with hot water, the colour has returned to his pale face. Kai lowers himself into the bath with a contented sigh, soaps his body and hair. I sit rapturously watching his glistening golden skin glow in the candlelight. He rinses off the lather, runs a hand down one stubbled cheek, grinning ruefully. “Once, if I had ridden home looking like this you would have become aloof for at least a week and I would think I had done something terrible to offend you.”

Immediately I am filled with shame at the memories. My antipathy toward his Saxon heritage that had taken far too long to conquer – nothing to do with my Kai, all my own insecurities, my foolish fears that its lure would one day prove too alluring…. The self-reproach clouding my gaze makes him cry out. “Oh little brother, no I didn’t mean…….a stupid thing to say…….forgive me.” I give a derisive bark of laughter. Forgive? There has always been so little to mitigate on his side ; so much to atone for on mine………

Quietly Kai holds out his razor. “Here I can’t do this properly yet…….and any way, I want your fingers on me……somewhere…….right now.” I have been rock hard since long before he stripped off his breeches – and he knows it …….. I smile slowly. “Cocky are we, big brother?” Gently I lather his face with soap. “Good choice of expression little brother.” Kai spreads his whipcord thighs and gestures toward his huge delicious prick, resplendently rigid and ready for…….anything.

I am never sure how I manage not to nick him or worse – holding his skin taut, trying to move the razor evenly, attending carefully to his high cheekbones, the luscious dimple in his chin, his exquisitely curved upper lip…… By the time I finish my hands are trembling so wildly that Kai is laughing uproariously, making my task twice as difficult and I am languid with desire…. I drop the razor to the hearth, Kai vaults from the bath, still sodden, and we do not even gain his bed, two steps away……. My knees falter……. one step is far too many……… the rushes must suffice…….

It takes me back to the beginning, those first wondrous tentative steps we took together……. My hands are slippery with soap, his moist from water and balm. His fingers are grasping and stroking my stiff shaft, my whole hand wrapped around his boisterous cock. It rears up jubilantly as I caress and fondle, a magnificent honeyed serpent soaring from its wet golden lair…… We peak together, face to face, his beautiful brown eyes and beautiful grin giving my heart wings……

Eventually we do find our way into Kai’s bed…… The floor is too cold and straight for sleeping, if not for…….other things. My big brother nuzzles drowsily. “Some time soon, I would like to go riding with you down to the river. For now though – simply fall asleep in your arms.” I smile and softly stroke his satiny cheek. “It sounds like heaven Kai my heart……..”

The fire fills the room with a rosy glow. Outside the village slumbers in precious peace. Kai’s body is warm against mine, my lips in his gossamer hair. As we fall asleep, he murmurs, “I love you so little brother.” At this moment, heaven doesn’t even come close ………….


End file.
